Hiking with Grandparents (and More)!

These last couple weeks were so busy and awesome!  

My parents arrived Wednesday evening and then Thursday was Ryder's and Bentley's first days going to real school!  Yay for things starting to open back up! 

At the bus stop with Camille (Colton had a sore throat and stayed home)

His teacher sent me this!

Yay for my oldest being in high school now!

We didn't do a whole lot else that day so my parents could get adjusted to east coast time, but on Friday, I made them come along for hiking club!

We'd had a Women's Conference a few weeks ago, and one of the speakers owns a bakery in Lynchburg, Mrs. Joy's Absolutely Fabulous Treats.  Ever since I heard her speak I've thought it would be really fun to visit her bakery, and with a little bit of research, I figured out that there's a river walk super close by!  So Craig arranged to take the afternoon off and another family met us there and we all hiked and ate goodies!  Tarsha was there at the bakery, so I even got to chat with her for a few minutes.  And man, everything we got from that place was AMAZING.  Best (and biggest!) cinnamon rolls I've ever had.  The only problem now is that I want to go back!  The weather kept threatening rain, but never really delivered, so that was a relief.  And Tarsha even pointed us to a lovely sitting area where we could enjoy all our goodies before heading home.  What a great day!

I look like I have a halo!

The lovely James River!

Really, I should have taken a picture of the cinnamon rolls-- each one was the size of FOUR cinnamon rolls!!!  And they were crazy delicious, too.

Rachael and Ian arrived late that night, and the next morning-- Colton's birthday!!!-- we hiked the Crozet Tunnel again!  I was very worried about finding parking, but it turned out just fine!  And I was very impressed that we didn't lose any kids AND that my mom managed to keep up the entire time!  Another hiking success!

Any guesses as to who's birthday this day was?

Ian carrying his mini-me, Clayton!

My children are part mountain goat!

What you don't see in the pictures is that this was a logistics nightmare.  Bentley also had a cross country meet that morning, and due to a bunch of unfortunate mistakes, the youth were ALSO going snow tubing at Wintergreen.  Craig's parents graciously offered to help out, and so Craig dropped Bentley and Kendra off at Panorama Farms for the meet, and then Tom and Donna took them snow tubing and brought them home.  It was an incredibly complicated morning!

After that we mostly relaxed and enjoyed Colton's birthday for the rest of the day!

This time Craig was in charge of the cake.  He was following MY instructions, but his turned out way better than mine, I have no idea why.  But it was awesome!

Opening presents

Cousin jumping time!  I love the action shot of Colton here!

Colton had requested Dutch babies for his birthday dinner (nothing like eating a dinner full of sugar and syrup before you move on to cake!)

And, of course, trick candles!

We wore out Clayton!

It was a wonderful day, with more excitement planned for the next day!